uBlock Origin Chrome migration tutorial

Last modified: 2024-06-02 20:06

This tutorial is for friends and fam who had their Chrome browser profile set up by me.

  1. What is happening?
  2. Review your list of excepted web sites
  3. Uninstall uBlock Origin
  4. Install uBlock Origin Lite
  5. Making or removing an exception for a particular web site
  6. Notes

What is happening?

Some time between June 2024 and 2025, Google is going to push out an update that will automatically disable uBlock Origin (uBO), a Chrome browser extension that I installed for you.  If you are caught unaware when this occurs, your daily web browsing will suddenly become extremely unpleasant and much slower as you are flooded with advertising and invasive tracking.  (Optional further reading on this unpopular move by Google)

The best substitute for uBO that will still work after the update is uBlock Origin Lite (uBOL), a simpler and less powerful version of uBO with the same maintainer.  The following sections give step-by-step instructions for migrating from uBO to uBOL on Chrome.

Review your list of excepted web sites

Before removing uBO, it is a good idea to review your list of excepted web sites (those for which uBO is turned off) as you may need to except them for uBOL too.  To review the list of excepted web sites:

  1. In the upper right, left click on the little puzzle piece icon ().  A popup appears:

    (N.B., the line saying "Application Launcher for Drive" in this example is not important.  It might say "Plasma Integration" or something else.)
  2. On the right side of the line saying "uBlock Origin," left click on the vertical ellipsis (⋮).  A menu appears:
  3. On that menu, left click Options.  A "dashboard" page appears.
  4. Across the top of the dashboard page is a list of tabs labelled Settings, Filter lists, etc.  Left click on "Trusted sites" and your list of excepted web sites appears:
  5. Make note of any web sites listed here that are familiar to you.  Ignore chrome-extension-scheme and other weird things that you don't recognize.
  6. When you are finished with this, left click the × in the dashboard tab (top left) to close it:

Uninstall uBlock Origin

  1. In the upper right, left click on the little puzzle piece icon ().  A popup appears:
  2. On the right side of the line saying "uBlock Origin," left click on the vertical ellipsis (⋮).  A menu appears:
  3. On that menu, left click "Remove from Chrome."  A confirmation box pops up:
  4. In the confirmation box, left click the blue Remove button.  uBO is then uninstalled.

Install uBlock Origin Lite

  1. Left click on → this link ← in your Chrome browser to find uBlock Origin Lite in the Chrome web store:
  2. In that web store page, left click the blue button in the upper right that says "Add to Chrome."  A confirmation dialog pops up:
  3. In that dialog, left click "Add extension."  The uBOL dashboard settings page appears.  In addition, a notification saying "uBlock Origin Lite has been added to Chrome" might appear at the top.  If it does not disappear on its own, left click the × in its upper right corner to dismiss it.
  4. In the uBOL dashboard settings page that remains open, find the section for "Default filtering mode:"
  5. Left click the little circle beside Complete.  A confirmation dialog pops up saying "uBlock Origin Lite has requested additional permissions:"
  6. In that confirmation dialog, left click Allow.  Complete should now be highlighted instead of Basic:
  7. Left click the × in the dashboard tab (top left) to close it:
  8. In the upper right, left click on the little puzzle piece icon ().  A popup appears:
  9. On the right side of the line saying "uBlock Origin Lite," left click the little pushpin icon () so that it turns blue.  A little red uBOL shield icon () appears at the top right of the Chrome window beside the puzzle piece icon.
  10. Left click the × in the upper right corner of the Extensions popup to close it.  uBOL is now fully installed and ready to go.

Making or removing an exception for a particular web site

If a particular web site is not working correctly, it may be necessary to add it to the list of excepted web sites.  This corresponds to the list that we reviewed before uninstalling the original uBO.

  1. Open the problematic web site in the Chrome browser.
  2. In the upper right, left click on the little red shield icon ().  A popup with 3 dashes and a square appears:
  3. In that popup, left click on the leftmost dash.  This changes the filtering mode from "complete" to "no filtering" for the site:
  4. If the web site still does not work correctly, the problem was never uBOL and there is no point keeping the exception for it.  To remove the exception, left click on the rightmost rectangle instead of the leftmost one.  This changes the filtering mode back to "complete."
  5. To make the popup go away, left click on the little red shield icon () again.  (The popup will disappear on its own if you do other things.)

Notes

On Windows, Linux, MacOS, or Android, the best plan is to migrate from the Chrome browser to Firefox.  uBO has always been more powerful on Firefox than on Chrome, and Firefox continues to support it fully.  Moreover, Firefox is now better than Chrome in general.  Unfortunately, Firefox does not really run on Chromebooks and Chromeboxes:  you can run the Android version badly or you can run the Linux version in the Linux development environment, but neither option is convenient or practical for general use.

These things are sacrificed in the migration from uBO to uBOL:

Follow the links for further technical details on the differences between uBO and uBOL and the Chrome vs. Firefox limitations.

These instructions were validated on 2024-06-02 with the following software versions:

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